The Promise of Redemption
by Sarah Kathleen
Summary: Stranded on Isla Cruces for three days before being found by Beckett’s ship, James Norrington contemplates his own actions and the reasons behind them, and an odd stranger gives him a sort of hope.


_Disclaimer_: I own nothing relating to _Pirates of the Caribbean_, outside two soundtracks and a DVD; this is evident in the fact that Norrington isn't the star. :)

_Genre_: drama, general, slight angst

_Summary_: Stranded on Isla Cruces for three days before being found by Beckett's ship, James Norrington contemplates his own actions and the reasons behind them, and an odd stranger gives him a sort of hope.

_Rating:_ PG/K, just to be safe, for some darkish themes.

_Warnings_: Vague OOC-ness on Norrington's part, maybe... other than that, nothing.

_Author's Note_: This is a prologue of sorts to an idea I had, but I could also stand on its own, I think, after some explaining. Depending on the response you kind folks give me, I may or may not post the "sequel" to this. Right now, I just want to see something that suggests that my dear Commodore isn't lost to Scruffington forever. (Don't get me wrong, Scruffington was fun, but I miss my Commodore, lol.)

I apologize now for typos and the like--I read through it a couple times, but I've always been horrible at catching those sorts of things.

The Promise of Redemption

Three days. For three days he'd waited on that Godforsaken island, Isla Cruces, for rescue, preparing signal fires that rather closely resembled burning houses for the past two days--having given the _Flying Dutchman_ and the _Black Pearl _time to sail a good distance from the island--in the hopes that they might be spotted by passing ships. Three of the original five fires were kept burning continuously, infused with anything that would cause the smoke to be visible against the background of island and sea.

James Norrington, former commodore of the British Royal Navy, one-time commanding officer of Fort Charles in Port Royal and one of the most well-reputed officers in His Highness' navy, had long since declared himself mad, but was beginning to realize that he had not shown the true extent of that apparent madness until now, as he sat on a desolate beach watching the horizon, a dead man's heart thumping in a cloth bag tucked against his chest.

In truth, he had every ability to leave; a rough plank of wood, most likely torn from an ill-fated merchant vessel, was hidden hardly twenty yards from where he presently sat, tucked away in the wild undergrowth of the miniature jungle. It was large enough for him to risk casting himself adrift, though no bigger--that is, it was not large enough to risk setting adrift with two passengers rather than merely one.

This was unfortunate, as James was regrettably not alone.

How long the woman had been on the island before his own arrival, he couldn't say. Why he didn't simply leave her there was another mystery. No, that was untrue; he knew precisely why he didn't simply leave her: because, despite what it had cost him, he still possessed an irrepressible feeling of responsibility to those whose advantage was less than his own.

During his rise through the naval ranks, that sense of responsibility inspired more than one gallant action, gaining the respect of peers, subordinates, and superiors alike. When he reached the rank of commodore--after nearly two years of commanding Fort Charles in the name of an incompetent superior, his predecessor, Commodore Winslow--he looked at the protection of the people of Port Royal, or any other who called to him for aid, as his duty, God-given or otherwise; he was a servant to his position, which in turn was a servant to the people. It was an arrangement he had no objections to.

As he had expected, such a position in life, combined with his own rigid senses of honor and chivalry, brought its hardships, demanded its tributes; but there was a sort of reparation, even fulfillment, in protecting those who could not protect themselves. He dealt well enough with the hardships and the sacrifices, consistently putting others before himself, as he had been raised to do since childhood. Until, at least, the day Elizabeth told him, before his men and the citizens of Port Royal, that she would rather die with William Turner than marry him. That, he had long-since decided, was the day that his life began its downhill slip into what had to be one of the outer circles of Hell.

"Mr. James Norrington," a light, delicate female voice called.

He sighed softly, struggling to control a surge absurdly strong impatience. Could the bloody woman not see that he wished to be left alone? James looked over his shoulder and gave her a look that had, in another life, sent midshipmen scurrying. The first time he had leveled it at her, she had balked entirely; the next few times, she had hesitated, but pushed on. Now she simply continued towards him as if she had been invited.

"Miss Cordelia," he said flatly, turning back to scan the horizon.

James ignored her as she came up and sat beside him, curling her legs beside her as if she were a mermaid on a rock. Miss Cordelia Whatever-Her-Name-Was (if she had one) had to be, without a doubt, one of the strangest people he had ever met in his life--including the miscreants at Tortuga and on the _Black Pearl_. Perhaps her wits had been addled by the sun in her extended stay on the island.

That had to be the answer, given that she most certainly looked normal. She was small, with the top of her head level with his chin--a full foot shorter than him--and was equally small around. She was hardly emaciated; in fact, she was in every way an average female, simply on a smaller scale. He had quickly decided that she only brought out his sense of responsibility because she was so small, and almost childlike in some ways.

Her face, at least, reflected her age; though it was a delicate, innocent sort of face, it clearly belonged to a woman in her early twenties, elegantly boned and, by definition, rather pretty. In fact, he had at first noted with sardonic amusement that the Port Royal debutants would have loathed her, with her graceful features, blue eyes, blond curls, and her mezzo-soprano, high alto voice that was as feminine as her appearance.

James himself only cared that she was keeping him from making an attempt to reach Port Royal. She was an annoyance, and an oddity.

After a moment, she looked at him with a sort of curious, assessing gaze, which he also ignored, rather hoping she would, as she had before, become bored with his surliness and leave. Then she looked out at the ocean, absently drawing figures in the sand. She sighed wistfully as she watched the water.

"It's rather amazing, what you miss," she murmured, almost to herself; her odd accent--a sort of blend of English and something which he had yet to define--had slackened a great deal over the past two days. Before he could bestow upon her a suitably waspish retort, she said, still facing the sea, "You have shadows, Mr. James Norrington. But you are also seeking something."

He looked at her austerely, wondering at her presumption and, admittedly, accuracy. She looked at him again, smiling despite his near glare. "My loved ones have always told me that I am annoyingly perceptive, Mr. James Norrington." She paused, and all traces of her smile faded as she looked down at the designs she had drawn in the sand. "And I should hope to have the ability to recognize shadows and quests, considering I am experiencing them myself."

Cordelia looked at the designs for a moment, and a small part of him wondered at what they meant to her. An imaginary language, perhaps? There did seemed to be a sort of order to the designs, but he was too late in his observations; she sighed brusquely and wiped the sketches away with an equally curt movement. Then she looked back at him, smiling once more and, in the process, carefully banishing the shadows--shadows of what? Memory?--from her face as if they had never existed, and the hand that had been drawing in the sand she curled about her ankle, which was clad in only two layers of skirts; her feet were bare.

"What you're searching for depends, I think, on what caused the shadows," she said to him. "What is it that caused your shadows, Mr. James Norrington?"

"That, I believe, is none of your concern, Miss Cordelia," he said icily. To his incredulity, Cordelia chuckled, flicking lightly at the sand.

"You might be surprised, Mr. James Norrington," she said wryly. "Your shadows and my shadows may be so intertwined that they resemble each other."

James gave her a look that suggested that he thought her completely mad, which was partially true. She laughed and said, "Believe it if you will, Mr. James Norrington, but I am a great lover of history. You would be amazed at the threads that tie together when they seem so very unrelated."

Now James frowned at her; 'a great lover of history,' was she? It did indicate that she was a scholar, a rare title to be held by a woman--any woman, let alone a woman who had to be unbalanced in some way.

Though, perhaps it wasn't a great enough unbalance to prevent her from studying. Upon first meeting, she seemed quite normal, in fact. But as time passed, one began to notice little oddities that an Englishwoman, no matter her social status, would never have. Perhaps that was the reason for the oddities--it was quite well known that it was unhealthy for a woman to read too much, and for all James himself had never placed any merit to the idea thanks to his sisters' influence, he was beginning to wonder if perhaps he'd been wrong.

"If you will not tell me what causes your shadows, then perhaps you will tell me what you are searching for." She gave him a pointed look that was a bit too rational for his peace of mind; it meant that, if he were to say anything to her of what he had done, she would understand the actions and their magnitude. "What is it that you're looking for, Mr. James Norrington?"

He didn't have to consider his answer, but he did hesitate. And then, for reasons he did not know, nor did he care to know them, he said quietly, "Redemption."

"Ah," Cordelia said in a soft tone. "Redemption from the shadows."

There was a note of understanding in her tone that both soothed and vexed him. The idea that someone could possibly understand was well nigh intoxicating; and yet, he didn't _deserve _to be understood. He knew that his actions were despicable--pirate worthy--and that simply made his position all the worse.

His small-bodied companion reached out and began drawing in the sand once more, the sketches looking very similar to the ones he'd seen her trace before, orderly and systematic, with random repetition of certain characters. A small part of him blamed a mild case of insanity; the majority of his attention was not on her idiosyncrasies, however. After a moment of drawing, she looked at him once more, studying his squalid form with a remarkably frank manner. "Perhaps," she said after a moment, "you have already started on this way to redemption?"

'Already started?' Unlikely; the idea was mirthlessly amusing. He had enough to atone for that it would take a great feat to compensate for what he'd done. The entire crew, all because of his bloody sense of _honor_… He might have answered her, but a sudden surge of self-loathing choked him, and he turned his face away.

"You don't think so?" she said. "If such is the case, then there are two options from which we may chose to select your situation."

James looked back at her then; she must have been truly mad. Two selections from which to choose his situation? His situation was quite clear, indeed; painfully so! Ignoring him, much like he had ignored her, she pursed her lips at the sketches she'd been working on and, once more, swiped them away. "Our first option is that your sins truly were as terrible as you believe, in which case you must simply strive to always be a good man, and hope to counteract the shadows with light of your own creation. Our second option, however, is one that I, having observed you for the past two, nearly three days, am more opt to choose."

Cordelia looked at him then, a deadly serious expression, so very different from her typically cheerful air, cast over her features. "The second option is that you have severely overestimated your actions, weighing them with a frighteningly over-exaggerated sense of honor rather than the standards you are truly being held to."

For the first time in three days, James truly appreciated his irritating, vaguely mad companion Cordelia Whatever-Her-Name-Was. It was almost endearing, really, to see her vouch for his relative innocence when she, in truth, had absolutely no idea who or what he was. Other than that, of course, he was Mr. James Norrington; that she knew quite well.

"I thank you for the vote of confidence, Miss Cordelia," he said lowly. "But I am very much afraid that the option that must be chosen is the former, not the latter."

She watched him for a moment, her expression pensive and uncommonly impenetrable. Then she shifted onto her knees and turned to face him directly. Once situated, she reached out and tugged on the filthy cuff of his equally filthy sleeve. "What are you?"

"Were," he corrected with a bitter smile. "I was a commodore."

"Mis- No, no mister. Simply commodore. Commodore James Norrington." Her smile was oddly forlorn. "It suits you."

"Once, perhaps," he allowed, rather unwilling to destroy the young woman's illusions entirely--or his own.

Abruptly she reached out and grabbed both his hands, turning them over and bending to study the alms m. Suspended somewhere between amusement and offense, James merely stared at her, waiting for some sort of explanation for this odd breach of decorum. "I have made quite the study of human behavior," she said, still scrutinizing his hands. "In my research, I have found that those in loftier positions often leave the work for the underlings." She looked up then, and was completely serious; he had half expected her to be playing some sort of joke. " Your hands say differently."

"Do they indeed?" he said blandly, pulling his hands away. Startled, Cordelia looked down to where his hands were folding themselves in his lap, her own resting empty on her knees. Then her eyes grew quite wide and she jerked her hands back, as if she only just realized what she'd done.

Taking pity on her, he said almost mechanically, "My shadows are entirely of my own making, Miss Cordelia. A year ago, a pirate was to hang under my jurisdiction; but this pirate was no ordinary pirate--he had a strange honorable streak to him, something which the large majority of pirates lack. The man was rescued by one of his allies, and I, essentially, let him go. Many months later, I was under pressure from my superiors to capture the pirate, as he caused a great embarrassment to the Royal Navy by escaping. I gave chase in order to please those superiors, and on the journey learn that the East India Trading Company would soon be arriving in the Caribbean. I decided that it would be better for the pirate to be found and taken care of by me rather than the East India Company, and so I heightened the pursuit. I was desperate enough that, when confronted with a hurricane, I attempted to sail through it. All but eight, myself included, were killed."

That was the bluntest, most concise, least perplexing explanation, he could make, really. Quite suddenly, James wanted a drink quite desperately. Preferably a very strong one, and in great quantities. But unless Miss Cordelia had a flask somewhere on her person, which he doubted, he was to be disappointed. It was time that the subject be shifted from his own idiocy--his list of crimes wasn't yet finished, and he was already desperately wishing he was drunk.

"And now, perhaps, Miss Cordelia, you'll return the favor." She gave him an odd look, and he explained, "Your shadows."

"Ah," she said with a smile that spoke of reluctance to discuss the topic at hand, but a resignation to do so nevertheless. "What has caused my shadows, then?" She studied the sea for a moment, then said, "Knowledge, Mr. James Norrington." Cordelia looked at him once more, a bitter sort of smile on her face. "Knowledge and all the risks it brings."

She was being purposefully vague; he was fully aware of this, but he also felt that, perhaps, he wouldn't press the subject. Her carefully constructed façade of nonchalance, her deliberate ambiguity, were, in fact, a defensive wall around her true struggles and emotions--it was a tactic he was painfully familiar with, as it was also a tactic he himself had used for years. In his experience, it was absolutely loathsome to have a complete stranger endeavor to "help" by attempting to crash down the walls that had been built. The most effective method was to let the one who built the walls be the one to take them down, and so he said nothing more, despite the fact that he had just presented her with a general synopsis of the most painful few months of his life.

"If your shadows are brought by knowledge, what are you searching for?" He smiled then, and the expression felt odd--it was his first smile in months that had nothing to do with derision or sarcasm. "The converse of knowledge, perhaps?"

Cordelia laughed softly. "Does knowledge have an opposite?"

James paused to consider the question, then said, "No, I don't suppose it does. A lack of knowledge would be the opposite of possessing knowledge. I suppose knowledge itself would have no opposite."

She smiled brilliantly at him. "Precisely. I knew that I wasn't the only one to think along such lines."

And then she displayed that annoying perceptiveness that she claimed to possess--or rather, a sort of perverse sense of perception: Just as he was beginning to appreciate his companion for the first time in three days, she chose to remove her presence, rising and dusting the sand off her person; it was quite dissimilar from the typical situation in she thrust her unwanted presence upon him relentlessly. Perhaps that had been her aim?

"Now, Mr. James Norrington, I'll leave you to your thoughts." With another smile, she whirled on the balls of her feet and walked down the beach.

* * *

The hour was ungodly, that much he knew. He was sorely tempted to lash out a hand and knock away whomever it was attempting to wake him. Over the past months, James' habitually light sleeping had become much heavier, and so his bearings were decidedly off as he struggled to stay the hand that was shaking him. 

"_James_! For goodness sake, wake up!"

Cordelia. He pushed her hands away, sitting up slowly as he struggled to gain some sort of balance. As soon as he was upright, she grabbed his upper arm in a way that could only be described as urgent. "What is it?" he said, his voice remarkably clear; he felt quite bleary and so had expected his voice to reflect it.

The hands that were gripping his arm tightened. "You must leave. _Now_." She pulled on his arm, ineffectually urging him to stand.

The fire was frighteningly low; he must have fallen asleep before providing enough fuel to keep it burning throughout the night. By the low light, he could see that Cordelia's face wore a worried, almost frightened expression, and very quickly he felt his head being to clear. Then her words penetrated his hazy thoughts.

"What?"

Cordelia tugged on his arm, "You have to get off this island, Mr. James Norrington, immediately. Come _on_!"

James struggled to his feet, then quickly started after Cordelia, who was already running down the beach towards sea. To his extreme shock, her apparent destination, something that had at first looked like an oddly shaped rock, proved to be an old but clearly intact longboat.

The instant she reach it, Cordelia began shoving the longboat out to sea. James quickly moved to help her, his chivalric instinct urging him to take over the task entirely, but she seemed not to notice. Once they reached hip level, Cordelia turned to him.

"Get in," she said urgently. He hesitated, fiercely perplexed, and she said shrilly, "Get in!"

He quickly proceeded to do so, then reached to help her in, but she brushed his hands away with a faintly brusque movement. "I can't go with you," she informed him bluntly, reaching past him to pull a very abused-looking oar from the bottom of the boat.

"What?" She paid him no heed, and so he reached out and grabbed her wrist. "Do explain, Miss Cordelia," he said in a tone that brooked no argument.

"I will help you now, Mr. James Norrington," she said. "All I ask is that you help me in return. But in order to help me, you must leave this island."

He hesitated, unwilling to leave a woman stranded on this Godforsaken place. Cordelia in turn reached with her other hand to grasp his wrist. "Please," she said, half pleading. "You begin banishing your shadows, and perhaps one day you will help me to banish my own."

"And leave you here on your own?" he demanded. "I'm afraid not, Miss Cordelia. Into the boat."

With a surprising burst of strength, Cordelia jerked both arms back, breaking his grip on her wrist. Once free, she thrust the oar at him, forcing him to grab it, and while his hands were occupied, she shoved on the boat with as much force as she could muster, sending him out to sea.

"I'll have no heroics from you, Mr. James Norrington," she called. "Time for such actions will come later. I will be fine."

James sighed, watching her small form become steadily smaller. The heart was still tucked into the leather bag under his coat, and now perhaps he might have a chance of getting to Port Royal. He touched the place where the letters of mark were, also under his coat; his only chance lay in reaching Port Royal and giving Beckett the heart--that was the only hope he had of being effectual whatsoever.

Once he had the position of privateer of England, he had the chance of making a difference; reputations had a habit of proceeding those that own them, and Beckett's reputation had most certainly done that. With the heart as bribery and the letters of mark to secure his position as one of Beckett's apparent allies, James would be given an opportunity to undermine the man from within, rather than ineffectually blast against him from without; those who did attempt to destabilize Beckett from without failed, which meant that despite their intentions, Turner, Elizabeth, and damned Sparrow would also fail. If he, James, were considered one of Beckett's allies, however…

The ship found him at dawn, and very suddenly, his words to Jack Sparrow were proven true: that heart, loathsome as it was, would prove to be his promise of redemption. He only hoped that, wherever she was, Miss Cordelia Whatever-Her-Name Was was having the same good fortune in the conquering of her own shadows.

* * *

Any thoughts? Should I continue, or let this stand on its own? 


End file.
